Culture shock always seems to appear in little, unexpected places.

Culture shock always seems to appear in little, unexpected places. Of course, there’s always that feeling of wonder when you first arrive in a new place. Everything looks new and different and exciting and you want to take it all in. You’re comparing the place to what you imagined in would be like and chances are you have no bearings within the new place so you have that feeling of being completely lost. Anything could be out there waiting to be explored.

This is an amazing and exciting feeling, but I wouldn’t describe it as culture shock. These are the wonders of traveling – you expect to see a new place, new architecture, new foods and see new languages. Seeing a new language and new city when arriving in Berlin wasn’t shocking to me, that is what I was most looking forward to. Instead, it’s the little things that amazed me.

In Berlin, people never jaywalk. It doesn’t matter if they can tell the walking sign is about to turn green and there are no cars coming for miles, they wait for the crossing signal to change to walk. Coming from Boston, this amazed me. They also don’t have turnstiles to get into the subway; it is a system based mostly on trust. Speaking of subways, their subway doors don’t automatically open. They dip their french fries in mayonnaise. These are the things that amazed  me. These are the things that showed me that I really wasn’t in Kansas anymore.